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Preface: I am going to run this through How Not To Be That Guy after I'm done, but if any of you readers find that my privelege is showing or that I'm guilty of a similar faux pas, please point it out.
I like to think of myself as a moderately enlightened modern man. I know about the invisible backpack, why there's no "straight pride parade", and why safe women-only space is different than a men-only gentlemen's club. I don't think I deserve praise, sex or special treatment for any of that.
To be honest, though, when it comes to Radical Feminism, I've always sort of written it off. "Well," I told myself, "I can see where that sort of thought was needed back in the 70s and earlier, but things have moved on since then, surely." The bits of Dworkin and MacKinnon's writing that I came across always struck me as out of touch with the world as I saw it, and at times felt actively hostile to me. (And here I realise that I was drifting into being That Guy, trying to make it All About Me.) For the most part, I'd settled into just ignoring the movement and its authors. It just didn't seem reasonable in a contemporary context. Browsing the wikipedia page on Radical Feminism didn't help much either.
Increasingly, though, I have been running into people who I feel are generally quite reasonable people, who don't seem to think that Dworkin et al. are unreasonable. This has lead me to conclude that I'm probably at least partly wrong. At a minimum, I haven't actually read an entire piece of Radical Feminist writing, so my opinion is largely an uneducated one.
In discussion with a friend, zie posited that Radical Feminism is similar to having a discussion with someone who is so angry that they can't quite think straight. A further suggestion was raised that it's valuable to have a vocal, extreme group so that more moderate feminist voices might seem like a reasonable compromise - a similar argument could be made about the role of PETA in a vegetarian context.
From what I understand of Radical Feminism, it focuses on the role of the patriarchy as the main oppressive force in society. The patriarchal model of dominance as the primary form of social interaction underlies pretty much everything we do. In particular, all sex is forced into a patriarchal context. Therefore, regardless of the intent of the participants, having sex happens in a oppressive context. Pornography is inherently harmful and can be directly associated with violent misogynist behaviour and attitudes, and prostitution is even worse. I've read a snippet by Dworkin which seemed to suggest that the best men can do for women is to just leave them alone. Don't talk to them, don't subject them to the Male Gaze, and don't force oppressive sex on them. I realise that a half-remembered snippet without any context is hardly clear, but that's the impression I got.
As someone who enjoys sex with women, I'm fairly uncomfortable with the world thus painted. My discomfort, however, isn't really a good reason to say it's wrong. Indeed, part of the unease I feel about Radical Feminism stems from the worry that it might be right. If so, I need to seriously inspect my love life. (You didn't think, dear reader, that I'd be able to make it through the whole post without trying to make it All About Me, did you?) At any rate, I feel that I should make an effort to at least understand Radical Feminism - even if I don't agree with it, I would like to be able to disagree from an educated position. At the very least, it should give me some practice in trying to read feminist writing without Making It All About Me.
Can anyone out there a) point me to something online that roughly covers the basics of Radical Feminism better than the wikipedia page, and b) suggest a book or two as a gentle introduction to Radical Feminist thought? From the snippets I've read, I'm not sure I'm quite ready to tackle Dworkin or MacKinnon directly. My next "serious" book is called "Feminisms", and is basically a first year women's studies book. Perhaps when I'm through that I'll have answered some of these questions on my own, or at least have more intelligent questions to ask.
I've tried to phrase this in such a way as to avoid implying that I'm entitled to having it explained to me. I'm also trying to avoid the Dancing Bear/praise thing (the point is not that the bear dances well, it's that the bear dances at all...). I've also been going over this piling on qualifiers for over a week now, so I'm just going to post the darned thing.
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Some random, floaty thoughts:
I believe that it's nearly impossible not personalize an issue on some level, so it's best to acknowledge how you feel but not dwell on it too much. Just a good middle ground to avoid the Making It All About You trap.
The patriarchy as the primary source of oppression, dominance and social interaction is a good starting point, but it definitely needs the addition of white and middle/upper-class into the concept, which was one of my major issues with older radical feminism. I believe the younger generation of radical feminists are better at addressing this problem. (They also seem to have melded much of their movement with the Echo Feminists.)
I'm often torn between my inner feelings of "Don't you tell me not to have sex with men and not to have penetrative sex or else I'm not a real feminist!" and "Um, yeah, there is this uncomfortable line where such sexual relations can too easily tilt into something exploitive/abusive and that scares me." (Or am I the only woman/girl who ever thinks this way?)
Sex work is still a complex issue that my brain has yet to untangle, even after writing a paper on the pros/cons of legalizing prostitution a few years ago. I still remain neutral/sided with sex workers rights. You'd think that by the time I started to creep up on 40 I would have figured it out. The best I can come up with is, some of it is degrading and exploitive, but not all of it, so I can't dismiss it out of hand yet, especially when there are still women who have to/want to participate in it as an industry.
Speaking of the 90s and 'straight pride parades', my university had this (small) group of students who decided to have a Straight Pride rally one day in the early 90s. They apparently had issues with anybody who wasn't heterosexual, conservative, white (well that part might be debatable) and Christian. They even came up with their own symbol - a blue square (no I never found out why). It just succeeded in making them look like pathetic morons who should have been spending more time studying. However, some of my more creative friends and fellow students co-opted the blue square, combined it with a pink triangle and designed queer ally buttons. I think I still have one lying around somewhere.
And I'll need to check out the feminism 101 site.
p.s I think men *can* call themselves feminists if the circumstances are right. Only you can really know it on the inside.
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I would argue that any form of relationship and any form of sex can cross the line into exploitative/abusive, regardless of the gender of the people involved. I don't think sex with men and/or penetrative sex has a monopoly on exploitative potential.
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I have read some rad fem views on penetrative sex among lesbians and there is the idea among some of them that lesbians should avoid it because it places one person in the position of power and therefore the potential for abuse, and sex should be about equality. I believe one opinion was, in a paraphrased nutshell, 'lesbians should not fuck.' I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. It's completely the opposite of how I think traditional "patriarchial sex" should be reformed.
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Also, I don't agree that one person having power over another is necessarily a bad thing if it's consensual and enjoyable. I know plenty of happy kinky people who really enjoy playing with power dynamics.
I believe one opinion was, in a paraphrased nutshell, 'lesbians should not fuck.' I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. It's completely the opposite of how I think traditional "patriarchial sex" should be reformed.
Agreed 100%. Also, since when did feminism become about women telling other women how to conduct themselves? That, I think, is my biggest beef with how feminism has evolved in certain circles. It started from the position that men should not dictate the lives of women, but quickly turned into women dictating each others' lives, complete with lists of Things Thou Shalt Not Do Or Else Thou Art A Bad Feminist. It seems as though the third wave of feminism is turning the tide against this trend, which is good to see.
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Which is exactly what people who are against BD/SM cannot understand. If you lurk around the anti-porn web communities, you will inevitably find posts on the subject, and most of the members will not only come out against kinky sex, but they will state without any doubt that anybody who practices such forms of sex is either mentally unstable and thus needs psychiatric hep, or an abusive pervert. Of course, many of these same people believe simple photos or statues of nudes are a type of porn and to view them is exploitive because the viewer is only gazing at the external human body and thus divorcing it from actual humanity and breaking people down to their "sexual parts." (And yes, they have the same views towards sex toys.)
It's all very mind-boggling to me. It must just be how they're hard-wired. I can understand being against porn because they've been hurt by someone's addictive behaviour or traumatized by viewing abusive smut, but to take that all to a dimension beyond that specific area, and believe *all* erotica is dehumanizing is a very narrow and depressing view of sexuality.
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No, that's about where I'm sitting, too.
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Definately not alone.